


blue moon (you saw me standing alone)

by syncxpate (bluememory)



Category: SHINee
Genre: M/M, Sexuality Crisis, bff!minkey, idk how to tag this, mentioned!kibum/oc, mentions of cheating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-05
Updated: 2020-02-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:42:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22572697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluememory/pseuds/syncxpate
Summary: kibum runs away to paris and jonghyun becomes his escape.
Relationships: Kim Jonghyun/Kim Kibum | Key
Comments: 24
Kudos: 49
Collections: Summer of SHINee General Collection





	blue moon (you saw me standing alone)

**Author's Note:**

> in which i write a prompt from a fic fest i couldn’t take part in.  
> thanks to the [Summer of SHINee](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Summer_of_SHINee_2019) mods for letting me play with the prompt despite how totally not in the timeline this is!!
> 
> for ref, prompt #92 from the first Summer of SHINee fest: _“With everything in me screaming ‘no!’ yet the sum of me sighed ‘yes’.” or, Kibum’s lonely in Paris and doesn’t intend for this person who keeps his bed warm to be anything more than that._
> 
> to the person who submitted the prompt (if you see this): honestly i've never read the book where the quote came from but the prompt got stuck in my head. i hope i did it some justice.
> 
> thanks j for taking time out of your current fandom to humour me and beta this. as always, love you

_Kibum traces his finger up the protruding veins in Jonghyun’s arm, still lying heavy around his waist. His smile is gentle. This is his normal now, falling asleep wrapped up in Jonghyun, waking up to his face._

_Jonghyun mutters in his sleep, like a child and tugs Kibum closer. Kibum goes willingly, feeling a lurch in his chest he tells himself he doesn’t mean._

⁂

“It’s a one-way ticket to Paris,” Kibum explains to a bug-eyed Minho. “I leave tomorrow. It just seems right you know?”

Minho sputters. “What the fuck, key. Look I know things seem like shit right now but running halfway across the world? Alone? To a country with a language that you don’t speak?”

Kibum looks down at the ticket, gripped too tight and creased between his fingers. “It just seems right,” he repeats.

“Besides, I learnt French in university! It’ll come back, I’ll be fine,” he continues, trying to lighten the mood.

“Fucking hell,” Minho mutters. “ _Fucking hell_.” He looks at Kibum searchingly.

“Are you okay, Bum? You know you can just tell me; I will help you, any way you need. Anything at all.”

Kibum sighs. “I’m not. I’m a 32-year-old unemployed almost divorcee and I don’t know what I need; a reboot maybe? Maybe I need to start afresh, a new life. Hence-” he emphatically waves the ticket in his hand. “Paris.”

“Why couldn’t you go to Japan. Or Taiwan. Hong Kong maybe. Singapore. India even. Why Paris. It’s like a fucking 15-hour flight. God you’re so fucking extreme sometimes.” Minho sighs.

“I want to go far enough from myself. This seemed a good choice as any.” Kibum shrugs. Minho’s eyes are bleeding compassion and pity, and Kibum hates it. “Besides it’s the city of love and Lord knows I need some right now.” He grins but the quip falls flat because Minho doesn’t smile back.

“I just want you to be okay,” his best friend says, achingly tender and Kibum smiles, fond, gentle, soft.

“I know. I’m trying. I promise.”

“Okay,” Minho replies. “Okay.” He raises his arms and Kibum willingly goes to him.

“I’ll send you off tomorrow. No protests.”

“I don’t deserve you,” Kibum mutters into Minho’s shoulder.

“Bullshit. You deserve everything you’ve got and more.”

⁂

Minho cries a little at the airport. He would never admit it, and Kibum doesn’t call him out on it but he sees the tears shimmering in Minho’s eyes and pats him gently on the cheek. “I’ll be okay, Ming. I promise I’ll call you the moment I’m not.”

Minho doesn’t answer in words, just pulls him into a suffocating hug. And Kibum knows it’s more worry than missing, more fear than anything else, of what Kibum might do, while so far away, where Minho can’t save him. So Kibum lets Minho hold him close and pretend not to cry until he has to go to the gate.

It’s only when he’s sitting in the aeroplane seat that the anxiety really rears its head, squeezing his chest and ribs until he almost cannot breathe.

“what the fuck am I doing?” He mutters to himself. It’s pretentious really, the idea that you have to relocate to a different continent to somehow discover yourself. Laughable. The truth is it’s less noble than even that. He’s running away. From the worry in his parents’ eyes, from the pity of his ex-colleagues, from the resentment and bitterness of his ex-wife, from the tedium and pressure of another job search, from himself. He isn’t searching for anything; he’s just escaping it all.

When he laughs to himself, it’s hollow and sad. And as pretentious as it may be, perhaps Paris really might offer him answers to questions he doesn’t even know if he’s asking.

⁂

Being in a foreign country can feel like you’ve been transported into an alternate dimension; strange cultures, unknown languages, faces with features so very different from yours. And it should be easy to lose yourself there, reinvent yourself, become other. And that’s what Kibum tries to do. In Paris he just wants to be another tourist, a forgettable face in a carousel of other forgettable faces. He gets around using a mix of English, French and hand signals, frustrates himself trying to follow the meandering streets, whiles away hours in cafes watching the bustling and hustling people, and misplaces days in art museums. He buys too many macarons and eats too many pastries.

And yet, despite how much he sees and how much he consumes, there’s an emptiness in his chest still too large, a black hole sucking away all the joy, a quiet reminder at the back of his mind that if he goes back, _when_ …it’ll still all be there.

In the middle of his second week in Paris, he makes his way back to the Eiffel Tower. It had been one of the first attractions he had gone to and back then he had been awed and amazed. But now, watching the chattering tourists taking cliched photographs, he laughs, quietly, bitterly. “I fucking hate French,” he whispers to himself, in his own native tongue. It’s not true but he doesn’t know how else to express the isolation seeping like through an IV drip into his veins.

He doesn’t expect an amused chuckle to sound beside him. “Then why are you here?” comes a question in perfect Korean. When he looks, it’s another man, shorter than him, dyed brown hair angled into soft eyes. “why do you care?” He retorts, also in Korean.

The stranger shrugs. “I don’t. Just curious.” His eyes turn back to the tower but Kibum’s gaze stays on him. It’s ridiculous but he misses hearing the language, misses seeing faces like his own. “It’s only been a week, stupid. Get a grip,” he mutters.

“You like talking to yourself, don’t you?” comes another remark from his left, the other man still staring forward.

“And _you_ like eavesdropping, don’t you?” The man laughs at Kibum’s reply and instead of leaving as Kibum expects, turns to face him fully. “Hello, I’m Kim Jonghyun. 33 years old.” He sticks out his hand and Kibum can see delicate-lined tattoos all the way up his forearm. He feels his mouth curve into a small grin and he reaches out his hand too.

“Kim Kibum. 32.”

“I’m older.” Jonghyun’s grin is smug. “You have to call me _hyung_.” Kibum blinks twice. “I don’t want to,” he replies, uncharacteristically brave. “You certainly don’t act like one.” But his tone isn’t brash or rude, and his mouth is still curved into that traitorous little smile. He thinks he could like this guy.

Jonghyun’s grin widens at the words. “You still have to.” Kibum pouts in response and Jonghyun laughs.

“If you hate it so much, what are you doing here?” The question is curious but not prying.

Kibum laughs softly. The answer sounds silly even to himself. “Escaping my life,” he replies, staring up at the tower. He wishes he could climb right to the top and stay there, maybe find some way to reach the sun.

“Is your life so terrible?"

His voice is tender almost, like the velvet touch of a rose petal. And Kibum hates it. It feels like pity. "I don’t want to talk about that. Take me somewhere,” he says, suddenly reckless. He grins at the other man, a challenge. And the man’s eyes sparkle at the request, like stars got caught in his irises. “I could be a mass murderer,” he points out.

“Then you’ll kill me,” Kibum sings. “Show me Paris, potential murderer, show me why I shouldn’t hate French.”

When Jonghyun laughs and takes his hand, Kibum lets him.

“Let’s get lost.”

⁂

They do get lost, wandering in the streets of Paris, because Jonghyun hasn’t been there long either, just a month. And perhaps these are streets Kibum’s walked on before, but being there with Jonghyun feels a little more magical. Jonghyun tugs Kibum down various alleys and small roads, ducks into a bakery and makes him eat pastries with names he doesn’t understand, orders a few variations of strange drinks at a pretty cafe and makes Kibum try them, flirts with a girl at a flower shop and buys a single rose for Kibum to hold.

It feels like a dream, spending a day with a handsome stranger in a foreign country, no concerns, no worries.

“You’re ridiculous,” Kibum tells him. But he takes the rose, so red, and smiles.

“I like romance,” Jonghyun replies, he slides his hand into Kibum’s again, and again, Kibum lets him.

Jonghyun is a tattoo artist. “An apprentice actually,” Jonghyun says. “my friend opened a studio here and my mentor let me come for the experience. And also, a little bit of a holiday.”

“You can afford that?"

Jonghyun grins. "I don’t just spend money, I take clients. You just happened to catch me on an off day."

Kibum snorts. "Aren’t I lucky?”

“Very lucky.” Jonghyun’s grin is contagious, and Kibum smiles back. There’s a lightness in his heart that he hasn’t felt in a while.

“People like to picnic in parks here,” Jonghyun says casually.

“Is that an invitation?"

"Maybe.” Kibum laughs but there’s something hopeful brimming in his chest.

“You could still be a serial killer,” he observes.

Jonghyun smirks. “I could. And I think you’d be a willing victim now.”

“Maybe,” Kibum replies, grinning. He wants to kiss Jonghyun.

The path in front of them opens up into a familiar road. “Oh hey, my hotel is here,” Kibum remarks. He sneaks a look at Jonghyun, now quiet next to him. “Do you wanna come up?”

There are a million reasons he’ll use later for why he does that: Jonghyun’s attractiveness - lean muscle full mouth, nice hands, Kibum’s own inexplicable loneliness, his need for comfort, sheer sexual frustration. But in that moment, it was simply desire. And when Jonghyun chuckles, low and considering, he knows it’s mutual.

He kisses him right there at the door and pulls him in by their intertwined hands.

Jonghyun has tattoos peppered along his arms and thighs, and a couple on his fingers. And as Kibum peels his clothes off, he finds one long plume of smoke that goes down the side of his body from his lower stomach, over his hips, just grazing his upper thigh. Kibum stares at it, mouth dry. He presses fingers over it and then his tongue and when Jonghyun moans, Kibum finds himself wondering how long he can keep this man in his bed.

⁂

“How long will you be here?” Kibum asks later. He glances away when Jonghyun sends him a searching look. He doesn’t know how to explain that he feels safe with Jonghyun, that when stretched out under him, he forgets the stress weighing on the back of his neck. Like he’s stepped back from the precipice of a cliff.

“Probably just a few weeks more. I have clients for the next two weeks then it’s just a holiday for a bit."

"I see.” Kibum can’t help feeling just a little despondent.

Jonghyun glances over again, mischief in his eyes. “Gonna miss me already?"

Kibum scoffs and turns to his side, away from Jonghyun. "You wish,” he mutters, but it’s weak. Jonghyun chuckles softly. He reaches over and slides his hand slow and contemplative down Kibum’s stomach. “I could come find you after my last client,” he suggests. Kibum arches into his touch. “Would you?”

“Why not?” Jonghyun asks. “You’re hot.” His hand shifts down to curl over Kibum’s length. It should feel offensive perhaps, to make a snap decision just based on that, that physical attraction Kibum can still feel fizzing over his skin, but Jonghyun pumps his hand up, once twice and flicks his wrist and Kibum groans, closing his eyes against the arousal flooding his senses.

“We’re in agreement then,” he gasps out. He feels rather than hears Jonghyun’s laugh, grazing over his skin, then Jonghyun presses closer, licks up his neck and Kibum decides it’s time to stop talking or thinking.

⁂

Jonghyun becomes an addiction. Kibum is enamoured with his kisses, the taste of his mouth, his skin, the sound of his moans. He lives for the moments at night when Jonghyun would call at the hotel and they would fall into bed and press into each other and Kibum would forget everything; the world, his life, his worries, and the uncertain future.

“I want to tattoo you,” Jonghyun murmurs. “I want to mark your skin.”

And Kibum has never wanted to be tattooed, is scared of the pain and the blood and the needles. But when Jonghyun says that, something in his stomach heats up.

“Why?” He asks.

“Your skin is so clear and perfect,” Jonghyun whispers. He traces nonsense symbols up Kibum’s thigh. “I want to make it not so perfect.” Kibum mewls as the wandering fingers tiptoe over his groin and tugs Jonghyun into another kiss.

Later, after Jonghyun is gone, Kibum scrolls through Jonghyun’s entire Instagram profile, staring at the various tattoos displayed there. He walks naked to the mirror and tries to imagine tattoos on himself, dark lines against his fair skin. He thinks of Jonghyun pressing needles into his skin, tracing ink into it, and shivers, it makes him feel deviant. When he slips back into bed and gets himself off to the thought, he feels so alive.

They go for a midnight picnic at a nearby park and kiss under the stars. And in the darkness, Kibum finds himself telling Jonghyun about the dissolution of his marriage.

They had been childhood friends become sweethearts, together since the ages of 16 and when they had gotten engaged aged 26 on their 10th year anniversary, it seemed like a fairy tale. But Kibum thinks the truth was a little more mundane.

"I think it wasn’t that we wanted to always be together. It was easy and comfortable; we were together so long and it made sense to marry so we did. And I think, I did love her.”

And maybe that might have been enough, just like that, if Kibum hadn’t ended up in a gay bar one night with friends and let himself get picked up. A childish drunk dare at first, but when the stranger guy had kissed him, their fronts pressed together, he had felt something hot stirring in his gut, something different than anything he had ever felt with his wife. He broke the kiss just as it started going further and turned to his friends with an easy laugh, but the experience opened up a craving in him, starting him on a lonely, guilty journey.

In the months after, he went back to that bar a couple of nights a week, alone, each time looking for someone new. He didn’t actually know what he was doing, just trying to unravel the feeling twisting in his gut, trying to put name to the want. He told himself since he never actually slept with anyone, it wasn’t cheating. But he always knew that was a little bit of a lie.

“You never knew before?” Jonghyun’s voice is gentle.

“No, why would I? She was my first and only. I should have stopped myself maybe. I could’ve been honest, involved her in it, tried to work on it together. Talked about it, instead of hiding it. I didn’t have to do what I did. But I just- I wanted to.” Kibum’s voice turns wry and sad. “I wasn’t a very good husband,” he says quietly.

Jonghyun slides a hand over his. “No, not really,” he agrees. But his fingers are tight over Kibum’s.

Perhaps the last straw was when he made out with a mutual friend at one of their parties, drunk and uninhibited. Their other friends laughed, thinking it a stunt, but she saw it a little differently; perhaps already aware of what he did on the nights he claimed he worked late. They fought that night, after everyone had left, their many years of sweetness curdled into bitterness. She accused him of leading her on and marrying her under false pretenses, things he couldn’t completely deny. Then she packed a bag and left.

They had been married just two years.

"And within that year I got retrenched because my company was downsizing my department and I just decided to come here,” Kibum says, voice so soft the wind almost blows it away.

“To escape,” Jonghyun says, remembering that flippant line Kibum had thrown at him, when they met almost a month ago.

“Yes. And I found you.” Kibum laughs as Jonghyun’s eyebrow raises.

“Am I your escape?"

"What would you say if I said yes?” Kibum murmurs. Before Jonghyun can reply, he rolls on top of him and kisses him, and Jonghyun huffs out a breath and kisses him back and they don’t say a lot for a while.

"I don’t want to be just your escape,” Jonghyun says later when they’re packing up the remains of the picnic.

Kibum pretends he doesn’t hear him, and Jonghyun doesn’t repeat himself but the words make something frantic pulse in Kibum’s chest.

⁂

When Kibum was nine, he fell in love with art. First crayons, then paint, and later on charcoal and clay. By the time he was 15, he was working on a range of mediums and his art teachers held great hopes for his future.

Unfortunately, his parents were scared of that.

Art, how delicate, how destructible.

They advised him not to pursue it further, told him the arts were too whimsical, too unstable. Dangerous. Told him he had to change his dream.

Kibum was an obedient boy, and he saw the sad truth in the things his parents were saying, so earnest, so loving. And instead he dived into mathematics and finance, eventually becoming an accountant. An iron rice bowl, security, safety.

And to Kibum, so very boring.

“I want to do something with art too,” he tells Jonghyun one lazy night. It’s easy to tell Jonghyun things, easy to bare his soul. In Paris he is transient, impermanent, easily forgotten. In Paris, nothing he says means anything at all. In Paris, if he chooses to hide himself in the body of a stranger there’s no one to tell him no.

Even Minho, who demands text updates every week, doesn’t know about Jonghyun.

“What’s stopping you? Go apply for a course or something.” Kibum scoffs at Jonghyun’s tone, so casual. As if it wasn’t something that keeps him awake at night, suffocating weight on his chest, paralysing him.

“You say it like it’s so easy,” he mutters, rolling away from Jonghyun to the edge of the bed. He stares down at the carpet, grey in the twilight. Even if he had been the one to start the conversation, he thinks he doesn’t really want to talk about this.

“It’s not,” Jonghyun says quietly. He tugs Kibum close again. “But you feel better once you try.”

“Really?” Kibum asks.

“Really,” Jonghyun says, nodding firmly. Kibum looks at him, mute, tracing his features with his eyes then his fingers.

“I used to be a high school teacher,” Jonghyun offers up. Kibum barks out a laugh, the thought of Jonghyun in a stuffy collared shirt and pressed pants in front of a classroom suddenly hilarious. “I really was!” Jonghyun laughs too, affectionate hand smoothing over the back of Kibum’s neck.

“But I started getting tattoos and I always wanted to draw and so one day I asked my tattooist how to become one and she laughed and told me to bring my portfolio because she was open for an apprentice.”

“It was a little bit of a joke at first. But I did it. And I had to quit my job and live on barely any pay for more than a year and it was so fucking scary. But I survived and you can too.”

Kibum just looks at him, still quiet. And then without saying another word, leans forward and kisses him. Jonghyun doesn’t protest, just kisses him back. Maybe he knows that Kibum kisses him whenever he doesn’t like where the conversation is going, too close to reality for a fantasy. Maybe he knows, but Kibum thinks if Jonghyun never says it, he’ll never need to find out.

⁂

But fantasies are cotton candy and fairy dust, and under the sun, they all dissipate eventually, and one night, Kibum opens the door to a solemn-faced Jonghyun. When Jonghyun doesn’t step in like always, wandering hands and hot kisses, his own welcoming smile drops slowly off his face.

“I’m flying back home tomorrow,” Jonghyun whispers as Kibum waits.

“Oh,” is all Kibum knows how to say. “Oh.” There’s a panic rising in his chest, his own reality coming back like a tidal wave. Jonghyun had kept it away, a magic spell wound around him, with his laughter and his voice and his stories, with his fingers and tongue and mouth. Kibum breathes out slowly, feeling his chest tighten.

Jonghyun is still talking. “I wanted to tell you earlier but I didn’t know how. Kibum, come back with me. I’ll show you the studio where I work. You can get a tattoo, just a small one. You can finalise the divorce and find a new job or hell, go back to school even. And…and we could be something, I think. If you want. Something real.” He raises his hands, palms up, like he’s a devotee offering up a sacrifice. Like maybe the sacrifice is himself.

Kibum takes a tremulous step back. “I-” he raises his hands to his mouth.

Jonghyun’s eyebrows furrow. “Stop running, Kibum. You don’t need to escape. You could do something else, something real. Don’t get stuck here.” He reaches out and curves a hand around Kibum’s cheek and at the touch something flares in Kibum’s throat, like pain, like anger.

He pulls away from Jonghyun, so violently it almost hurts. “No. _No_. You don’t get to tell me what to do. You’re not my boyfriend, you’re not- not anything. You’re just a guy I fuck, a body in a bed. We aren’t- we’re not- _anything_. I can do what I want and I want to stay here. You go back if that’s what you plan to do. It doesn’t matter to me. You were just- you’re no one to me. You have no right to tell me what to do.”

When he finishes talking, his breathing is ragged and Jonghyun has taken many steps back. There’s something heartbroken in Jonghyun’s gaze that’s an echo to the ache in Kibum’s chest.

As the silence grows, Jonghyun just stares at him, eyes wide and hurt. Then incredibly, his lips turn up into a smile, small and wispy. “okay,” he says simply. “if that’s what you want, okay.” As he turns away, Kibum thinks he sees tears glimmering in his gentle eyes. Then he’s gone and his name that leaps onto Kibum’s lips goes unspoken.

“Fuck,” Kibum whispers. He slowly closes the door and slides to the floor. When he starts crying, a part of him is still surprised.

Jonghyun wasn’t supposed to mean anything.

⁂

Paris is monochrome without Jonghyun. Like the world is shrouded under a dense fog. Kibum wakes up every morning with an itinerary, but it feels a little like he’s sleepwalking. He mimics the days spent wandering with Jonghyun in the streets, the afternoons whiled away people watching in cafes, he visits all the tourist attractions again, and even books himself on daytrips out of Paris. But the chocolate drink that Jonghyun lived on that Kibum always said was too sweet is bitter, the macarons from the nearby bakery that Jonghyun often brought for him are tasteless. And every view seems far less spectacular without Jonghyun whispering in Kibum’s ear. Even the stars seem to wink only dimly from their perch in the sky.

He goes back with a couple of men from clubs, lets them sink their bodies onto him, press him into their beds. But he can’t reach that shining high, not in the same way. And he slips away right after, bile rising to his throat.

At night he lies in the suddenly too big hotel bed, stares at the ceiling and wishes someone else was in it, someone who would talk about the stars.

He’s lonely. Like he was before Jonghyun, longing for someone else in this sea of a country. But now he’s lonely for a one very specific person.

When he finally buys his ticket home, he’s been away for more than two months.

⁂

“Fucker,” Minho says, when he greets Kibum at the airport. “So much for I’ll call you regularly.”

“I _never_ said that,” Kibum reminds him. Minho snorts and picks up Kibum’s bag.

“You look better,” Minho remarks.

“Do I?” Kibum asks.

“Yeah, less desperate and stressed.”

Kibum laughs. Maybe he was, maybe it was the break, the French food and air, maybe it was being around all the tall pretty people, trying to form his tongue into foreign syllables. Or maybe it was a tattoo artist who sometimes sang lullabies to him in the dark of the night.

“Love you Ming,” he says lightly, when Minho drops him at his apartment. (too big for just him now.) He reaches up for a hug and Minho raises his eyebrows but hugs him back.

“What brought that up?”

“Because I’m a mess and you still choose to deal with me.”

“You’re a mess but you’re _my_ mess of a best friend and no one else gets to deal with you.”

Kibum chuckles and Minho gently places a hand on his arm. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah,” Kibum says. “Yeah I am.” He knows Minho doesn’t quite believe him. But he ruffles Kibum’s hair and doesn’t say anything else.

Kibum takes a breath. “Hey Ming?”

“Hmm?’

“I met someone there.”

“Did you? What’s she like? “

Kibum sucks in another breath. "He, actually.” He looks up in time to see Minho’s eyes light up with comprehension and a small chuckle escape him. “Is that okay?”

“Of course,” Minho says, smile encouraging. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

Kibum feels the knot in his chest loosen, just a little, and he lets himself smile too. “He wanted to be something real,” he tells Minho.

⁂

When Kibum enters his apartment, he opens the windows and lets the air in, chasing away the musty smell of the stillness. “Like me,” he says aloud. “Chasing away what I used to be.” Maybe he’s really been standing still too long, maybe instead of running away from his life, he could try to run towards it. Jonghyun would have liked that, perhaps. He laughs softly.

It’s been three weeks since the last time he saw Jonghyun.

⁂⁂⁂

“Uh I have an appointment. I’m Kim Kibum.”

The girl at the entrance of the shop laughs. “no need to be too formal here. You can sit first! He’ll call you when he’s ready.”

Kibum shuffles slowly to a nearby chair to wait. As the minutes tick by, he sinks deeper into the seat and has to restrain himself from covering his face with his hands. This isn’t exactly what he had ever envisioned himself doing but it also feels right, deep into his bones.

“Kibum?” The achingly familiar voice breaks him out of his thoughts.

“Hi,” Kibum whispers, looking up at Jonghyun, standing stiffly before him, polite smile on his mouth. It’s been six months since he last looked at Jonghyun, six months since he hissed poisonous words at him, six months since a chasm opened in his chest when Jonghyun walked away.

He wants to reach out and pull him close, and he almost does, but Jonghyun turns away.

“My stuff is this way.” Kibum follows quietly behind Jonghyun, heart thudding in his chest.

“You wanted a crescent moon, right?” Jonghyun hasn’t really looked him in the eye yet, gaze always just flitting away.

Kibum trains his own gaze onto Jonghyun’s shoulder. “Yeah. On my wrist.”

“Okay,” Jonghyun mutters, turning to a little ledge. “I’ve a few sizes here, so I’ll do up the stencil once you choose. Are there any particular colours you want? I remember you asked for colour.”

It’s awkward, too formal, too stilted. As if they were strangers, Kibum’s Kakaotalk message to book an appointment the same as everyone else’s. As if they’ve never spent entire nights just lying together and talking, as if Jonghyun hadn’t put his mouth and tongue on the most secret parts of Kibum.

And Kibum hates it.

“I wanted blue,” he says softly. And as Jonghyun nods and starts fiddling with more things, he says louder, unsolicited, “Someone I knew once told me he wanted to be someone’s blue moon, and I think, he might be mine. It’s for him.”

Jonghyun freezes and there’s a tiny sound of clattering before he turns slowly and for the first time in the twenty minutes that Kibum has been there, looks right into his eyes. “You remember that,” he says slowly. “I think we were both a little drunk when I said that.”

“I thought it was _so stupid_ ,” Kibum says, words garbled by the sobs that are gathering in his throat. He looks at Jonghyun and reaches out a hand before letting it flop down.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m so sorry. And I- I finalised the divorce and I’m renting a smaller apartment and just started this course in graphic design. And I told Ming about you. And my parents. I’m living in the real world, you know, like you said. No more escaping and- I, I miss you.” He takes a sharp breath, and clenches his fists into the cloth of his t-shirt. “you’re not just my escape. I think we could be something real. If you still want to be anyway.”

Jonghyun doesn’t say a word for what feels like an eternity. And all Kibum hears is his heart thudding in his ears. It might be too late, he knows that, but Jonghyun had accepted the appointment and Jonghyun hadn’t hurt him back and Jonghyun is here _right now_ and sometimes you have to try, right?

Then Jonghyun’s mouth curls into a smile and he pushes forward to kiss Kibum, hands curving around his face. “You were a bitch you know,” he whispers, when they break apart. “But so was I and oh, I’ve missed you too. Okay Kim Kibum, let’s be something real.”

Kibum’s laugh sounds more like a sob. “Thank you,” he whispers back, to Jonghyun, to the universe, to an unknown god. And then he tugs Jonghyun into another kiss.

⁂⁂

(“I want to be someone’s blue moon one day.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“You know, like blue moons are supposed to be rare. If you’re someone’s blue moon, you’re a rare occurrence. You’re special. I wanna be someone’s special rare blue moon.”

“You’re _so_ drunk.”

“Will you be my blue moon, Kibummie?”)


End file.
